


Yarn

by saltstreets



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen or Pre-Slash, Ghost Stories, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Tall Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: Hartnell was aware that Blanky was telling a tall tale, but all of a sudden he also became certain that he was also making up his story entirely on the spot.
Relationships: Thomas Blanky/Thomas Hartnell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	Yarn

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I'll admit it: this is late. Written for the Monday prompt, “I heard someone say…”
> 
> I’ve been wanting to write Blanky/Hartnell again for AGES and then realised that Sunday was the one year anniversary of the other fic I wrote for them, so what better time could there be to bang this out? Nebulously a prequel to that. Absolutely an excuse to write Blanky in the spotlight.
> 
> For that my apologies: this really was going to be a kissing book. But my brain refused and wanted to do pre-relationship instead. I know, I'm furious as well. >:(

It was difficult work, raising the big tent on the spot chosen for the Carnivale. The wind blew the canvas about and the poles kept sagging against each other, and when they had finally managed to get everything in place, everyone had to the dash about with armfuls of thick wooden stakes, hammering them into the frozen ground quickly before the whole thing could collapse again.

But once finished, the big tent _was_ impressive. A great canvas hall, with even a little annex for a cloakroom at one end.

The men stood back and admired their work, before drifting away by unspoken mutual agreement. The wind was blowing in such a way that the two ships lay to leeward, and any ringing of bells to signal the time was whipped away from the tent, leaving the men there in a state of timelessness. But it was certainly time for a break.

Hartnell glanced over the scene, and found his eye drawn almost magnetically to Mr. Blanky, sitting at one of the long trestle tables that had been roughly but sturdily constructed for the purposes of the coming festivities. A few other men were clustered around the same table but it was to Blanky that Hartnell’s gaze gravitated. He’d gotten accustomed to looking for Blanky over the past weeks, to keeping his ear open in case he was called for, to be sent up and down the rigging or back and forth along the long length of Terror’s frozen waterline, observing and measuring and scribbling and reporting back.

Hartnell had half-expected to be blacklisted by Crozier forever after the whole- mess with Hickey and the Lady Silence. He’d heard from one of the marines about the debacle that had been Hickey’s lashing and Crozier’s fevered fury throughout, and maybe Hartnell hadn’t antagonised the captain in the same way that Hickey had, but he had still put himself in the dangerous position of being tarred by the same brush. So after Blanky had lost his leg and had asked for volunteers who might aid him in taking measure of the ice and keeping eye on the progress of the pack, Hartnell had leapt at the chance. If he did good work for Blanky, his standing with the captain might manage to inch its way back up.

And so now he drifted over with no real intent and smiled when Blanky looked up at his approach. “Hullo, Mister Blanky.”

He flattered himself that Blanky looked pleased to see him. Or at least, not indifferent. “Hartnell. Put your feet up, lad.”

There was no real place for Hartnell to take the suggestion literally, but he accepted the invitation in the spirit it had been intended, and claimed a spot on the bench next to Blanky.

Maybe Doctor MacDonald had him under orders not to overtax himself, or maybe he was still worse off than suspected. Blanky was good at hiding his hurts: this was one of the things that Hartnell was quickly coming to learn. But whatever the reason, the job Blanky had chosen for himself was meticulously folding paper into stars, presumably as decorations. Hartnell watched him at his task for a few minutes, the cunning way that Blanky made each precise fold to fit the paper strips together.

He was just racking his brains for something intelligent and interesting to say when his ear caught on something, and promptly tripped over it.

William Wentzall was sitting at the end of the table with a couple ship’s boys in tow. Wentzall was hardly more than a boy himself, but Chambers and Golding both had an almost permanently waifish appearance about them which hadn’t been helped by the cold and the cut rations, and which made Wentzall seem positively hardy by comparison.

Hartnell didn’t know Wentzall well. He’d been doing his best to get acquainted with the Terrors after having transferred over, but it was slow going at times. Sailors were insular types by nature and the voyage had already gone on long enough that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to just slip into the established messes and watches. It was part of the reason why Hartnell was so pleased with his new post by Blanky’s side. Blanky had a no-nonsense approach to Hartnell that had never made him feel like a outsider.

So he hadn’t paid much attention to whatever it was that Wentzall was saying to Chambers and Golding until he heard the word _bear_.

Wentzall was leaning in towards the two boys confidentially. “Some’re saying it’s a ghost. It’s the ghost of some sailor lost on one of the expeditions come before us.”

“A ghost?” squeaked Golding, hands crammed up into his armpits either from cold or nerves, Hartnell couldn’t tell.

Sitting a bit further down the table, Henry Peglar snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I believe it,” insisted Wentzall. “Why else would the creature be so fixed on us? It’s one of Sir John Ross’s lost men, trying to rejoin the crew.”

“Why would one of John Ross’s men be wanting to kill us?” Peglar pointed out. “It doesn’t make any sense, this story. If you’re going to tell ghost stories they ought to make sense.”

“You’ve been reading too many books, Henry,” said Wentzall, derisively. “Thinking you know anything about stories, now.”

“I don’t see how _reading_ could make me _not_ know anything about stories-”

“It wouldn’t be one of Sir John’s men. We never lost anyone from the _Victory_ around these parts _._ All them’s what died on the _Victory_ did so farther inland.”

As one, all heads swivelled towards Blanky, sat with his wooden leg propped up on the bench beside him. Wentzall’s eyes fell to the carved appendage and he had the good grace to redden, abashed. “Beggin’ your pardon, Mister Blanky. Didn’t mean no disrespect, sir.”

Blanky waved him off. “Nothing harmed. I just thought I should throw my own opinion into the pot. And besides, that bear’s no ghost. Ghosts don’t have claws.”

“This one might,” Wentzall objected, albeit with less assuredness than he might, had Blanky been a simple AB rather than a petty officer in the flesh.

“Nah. I know ghosts. I’ve been on a ship that was haunted,” said Blanky, casual as you like.

Golding’s eyes, saucers at the best of times, went nearly to dinner plates. “Really, sir?”

“Oh, really.” Blanky twisted two pieces of carefully folded paper together with a deft motion, producing another star which he set aside. “A whaling ship, it was. Back in, oh- ’20, maybe ’22, must have been. I’ve served on more ships than I could count, but that was the only one haunted.”

“What was the ship haunted by?” asked Chambers, looking nearly as diverted as Golding.

“By a whale, what else,” Blanky said, folding another star. “I said it was a whaler I was on.”

Across the table, Peglar was unable to restrain a snort. Blanky made no acknowledging movement but Golding shot him a look that spoke clearly as to what he thought of Peglar’s spectral opinions.

“I was just a kid at the time,” Blanky was saying. “Twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe. Not older than young Hartnell there.” He jabbed a half-folded star in Hartnell’s direction. “Wet behind the ears. A new-born calf.”

Hartnell opened his mouth to object, but then shut it again. Another thing he had learned about Blanky was that it was impossible to get him to stop, especially when he was being encouraged. And Chambers and Evans were certainly encouraging him: both boys had now focused all of their attention away from Wentzall and onto Blanky. Wentzall didn’t seem too put out to have lost the spotlight. He had turned towards Blanky himself.

Blanky took note of the eyes and ears upon him. And deliberately set aside the paper to extract his pipe from his coat pocket, a sure sign that he was settling in with a yarn.

 _Here we go,_ thought Hartnell, and then the pleased anticipation he felt was suddenly swamped by a sad little wish that he could say the words aloud, exaggerating a roll of his eyes to make Blanky laugh. It was all very well being treated as a Terror like any other by the ice master, but an AB couldn’t quite treat a master in the same way. If Blanky had just been any old sailor on _Terror,_ Hartnell would have liked to have been his friend. He would have liked a lot of things. Nebulous things. Things that didn’t live well on the ice.

“We were off the coast of Greenland at the time. We’d been on the chase after a sperm whale, and he’d given us a right merry time of it. We were exhausted by the time we caught up with him- but catch up we did.” Here Blanky mimed a complex action that seemed to encompass sailing, harpooning, and celebrating all at once, a sort of windmilling movement with one arm and a violent expression of thanks with the other. Hartnell ducked discretely to avoid an inadvertent smack.

“Enormous beast this was, big even for a whale. If you’ve never seen a whale, you can’t possibly know. Man doesn’t know just how small he is until he’s stood next to a whale. Even a dead one- impressive things. And this one was bigger than anything I’ve ever known. We hauled it up on deck, and began to cut into it, going about our jobs. Bloody, _bloody_ work at the best of times, but this time something was off, somehow.”

“Off?” Golding asked timorously, as if afraid to know.

“’Twas just a sense in the air we all felt,” said Blanky enigmatically, blinking slowly, his pipe bobbing in thought. “Maybe the sea was quieter, too quiet for that time of year. Maybe it was one of those days when the clouds seem so low as to be draping the masts, like top gallants you never unfurled. Maybe nothing was different or wrong that could been seen, but everyone _knew_ it was there.

“We cut open the belly all the same. Now sometimes when you cut into the belly of a whale you’ll find something interesting: flotsam an’ jetsam swallowed by the dumb animal while he’s looking for his dinner. But mostly you just find the dinner itself. This time was different.”

Blanky paused for a second in which Hartnell half expected Golding to faint. Blanky was good at telling a tale: he knew the right moments to hesitate and when to push on through. Hartnell was aware that Blanky was telling a tall tale, but all of a sudden he also became certain that he was also making up his story entirely on the spot. He couldn’t say how it was that he knew, just that Blanky had an amused glitter in his eye and there was a cadence to his voice that reminded Hartnell of a low, slow rolling wave arching up lazily, growing larger and being carried by its own momentum before crashing on the shore. Blanky was riding the wave of his own invention with great enjoyment.

Hartnell hid a grin behind his hand, and snuck a glance at Blanky. Blanky didn’t meet his eye, but his mouth twitched down as if suppressing a grin of his own, and Hartnell knew his glance had been caught.

“We cut him open. I was right there making the slice, and what do you think tumbles out into my hands? Right into my waiting arms like a babe come new into the world, but an _human skull_ , and a whole skeleton of bones right behind it. A _man._ Right from the innards of the great creature.”

“Jonah,” whispered Chambers, aghast.

Blanky nodded in solemn agreement. “It may well have been.”

Peglar opened his mouth, presumably to object that Jonah had been spat out by the fish of legend and had not, in fact, died in its belly, but Hartnell flicked a finger at him and he said nothing, only smirked at Blanky’s captive audience.

Chambers and Golding were clinging to Blanky’s every word. Blanky had always commanded a decent amount of awe from the ship’s boys -Hell, he commanded a decent amount of awe from the officers and ABs as well, Hartnell included- but now he was holding court in a way worthy of the haughtiest lieutenant or most grizzled captain.

“Now no one knew quite what to do with those old bones, but the ship’s doctor, a surgeon, said he wanted to keep them as a scientific curiosity, or perhaps to study. So we bundled the poor dead blighter down below and went back to our work on the carcass above, all pretending as we weren’t rattled by what we’d seen.

“I had the middle watch that night. Cold night. Greenland’s not much better than the Arctic when it comes to not freezing your balls off, so I’m making quicker rounds than usual, trying to keep warm. An’ that’s when I see it.” Blanky paused again (overdoing this one just a bit, Hartnell thought) before stating dramatically, “a _ghost.”_

The gasp from Golding really wasn’t entirely necessary. It was fairly obvious where the story had been going.

“What did he look like?”

“Was he _dead?”_

“Of course he was dead, George you idiot-”

“Was he _bones?!”_

Blanky waved his hands placatingly. “Yes, yes he was dead. He looked- like a man, though a dead man. Not quite a skeleton but rather far gone down the path of ‘corpse’, you know. Wearing a sailor’s coat and trousers, but with the most horrible, hollow skull of a face I ever seen. And great glowing eyes,” he added, almost as an after-thought.

“I wasn’t alone on the deck and from the shouts of dismay from my mates on watch I knew I wasn’t the only one seeing this. He started moving towards me, and I swear, I thought he was coming right at me to tear my throat out. Or to slit me open like I’d split him out of that whale. But he didn’t. He walked right past me, as though he didn’t even notice me standing there with my mouth hung out like a fish, and then he flung himself over the rail.

“I reached out! I made a grab for him! He might have been a haunting but I’m not the sort of man to let a fellow sailor go overboard, even if he is a bit decaying around the, well,” Blanky made a gesture to his own general person, “everything. I reached out- and my hand went right through him. I reached for a rib, for a bit of neckerchief, but my fingers passed through like he was nothing but fog. He went over right before my eyes. Never made a splash in the water. Just vanished. And then, as I’m there straining to spot something in the black below, the great spectre of that _whale_ burst from the hull of the ship- the hull right beneath the deck where I was stood! Just a tremendous silvery whale leaping out into the water right where the first ghost had vanished.”

A pin dropping upon the ice would have made such a terrible cracking sound in that moment such as had never heard.

“Next morning, no one said a word. But the doctor brought up those bones from his bay and we tossed ‘em overboard. And the captain never even gave an order, but we hauled the whale back up with the slings and lowered him back into the water. And I swear to you,” Blanky said, his voice suddenly gone low and dark, “I _swear,_ that creature -what I’d helped cut open myself, mind- all hacked and speared with all the might we possessed on that ship, I swear I saw that creature swim away all under its own power, and follow those bones back down beneath the water, just as its spirit had the night before.”

Every crystalline flake of snow fluttering by on the breeze seemed to slow in attention to Blanky’s words. But Blanky stretched, and shifted his wooden leg. The sturdy scrap of it against the bench shook his little audience awake again. “And that was that. Next night, nothing unusual. Hared off in the opposite direction we did, and a handful of days later we had another whale up on the deck and never a trouble.”

“Were you- was- was it frightening?” Golding seemed almost alarmed to ask, as though the act of implying that Blanky could feel fear might be against the Articles of War.

“Terrifying,” said Blanky calmly. “Didn’t sleep a wink for a week after. But,” he continued, “that’s how I know that bear’s no ghost. Still a mighty alarming beast, but a beast. Solid. You can put your hand on it, and it can certainly put _its_ hand on _you._ ” He gave his leg a significant look. “But that’s not a bad thing. The bear’s a living being through and through. And _that,_ that’s something that we can deal with.”

As though the pronouncement had broken some spell, at that moment the wind dropped and they could hear the clanging of _Terror’s_ bell distantly across the ice. Time flowed back in, irrepressible.

Chambers and Golding scurried away wide-eyed, with respectful but slightly confused half-salutes to Blanky. Wentzall beat a more dignified retreat but he also nodded and mumbled that he would think on what Blanky had said, and maybe talk to some of the other ABs about the properties of ghosts. Blanky was grinning around his pipe, the stem clamped securely between his bared teeth.

Peglar ducked away into the newly erected tent but Hartnell lingered a moment. Blanky had already gone back to folding his stars, although now he was chuckling to himself.

“Did _any_ of that really happen?”

“Now that would be telling,” said Blanky with a wink, “and I’ve done enough of that for today.”

Hartnell stared at him, and then laughed. Blanky was so- _himself._ It was reassuring. He felt a swell of warmth towards the man: and he wanted to say something about it, too. He felt tangled about Blanky, in a way he didn’t often feel about a person.

But- Mr. Blanky was the ice master, and had the ear of the captain besides, and so Hartnell swallowed what he would have said to a mate, to a friend, and just nodded instead. “Then. I’ll. Leave you to it, sir.”

The almost-response had been observed, Hartnell was sure of it. Blanky’s dark eyes had caught on the broken movement of his mouth, and his own mouth bent into a crooked half-something that Hartnell couldn’t quite understand.

“Well, Hartnell,” said Blanky, and reached under his wooden leg to heave it up and over the bench. “Off with you then.”

Walking away, he thought Blanky might be watching him go. Hartnell engaged in a brief internal struggle whether or not he wanted to check, and by the time he had made up his mind and snuck a glance over his shoulder Blanky had turned back to his paper stars. Or maybe he had never been watching Hartnell in the first place.


End file.
